Firecrawl Local Dev Loop

FireCrawl Local Dev Loop

Overview

Set up a fast, reproducible local development workflow for FireCrawl.

Prerequisites

• Completed firecrawl-install-auth setup
• Node.js 18+ with npm/pnpm
• Code editor with TypeScript support
• Git for version control

Instructions

Step 1: Create Project Structure

my-firecrawl-project/
├── src/
│   ├── firecrawl/
│   │   ├── client.ts       # FireCrawl client wrapper
│   │   ├── config.ts       # Configuration management
│   │   └── utils.ts        # Helper functions
│   └── index.ts
├── tests/
│   └── firecrawl.test.ts
├── .env.local              # Local secrets (git-ignored)
├── .env.example            # Template for team
└── package.json

Step 2: Configure Environment

# Copy environment template
cp .env.example .env.local

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start development server
npm run dev

Step 3: Setup Hot Reload

{
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "tsx watch src/index.ts",
    "test": "vitest",
    "test:watch": "vitest --watch"
  }
}

Step 4: Configure Testing

import { describe, it, expect, vi } from 'vitest';
import { FireCrawlClient } from '../src/firecrawl/client';

describe('FireCrawl Client', () => {
  it('should initialize with API key', () => {
    const client = new FireCrawlClient({ apiKey: 'test-key' });
    expect(client).toBeDefined();
  });
});

Output

• Working development environment with hot reload
• Configured test suite with mocking
• Environment variable management
• Fast iteration cycle for FireCrawl development

Error Handling

Examples

Mock FireCrawl Responses

vi.mock('@firecrawl/sdk', () => ({
  FireCrawlClient: vi.fn().mockImplementation(() => ({
    // Mock methods here
  })),
}));

Debug Mode

# Enable verbose logging
DEBUG=FIRECRAWL=* npm run dev

Resources

• FireCrawl SDK Reference
• Vitest Documentation
• tsx Documentation

Next Steps

See firecrawl-sdk-patterns for production-ready code patterns.